Artists Rizman Putra and Safuan Johari of the duo NADA talk about the evolution of their artistic practice, from being a fictional band at the Malay Heritage Centre to becoming an international art/music juggernaut. In this video, they share more about their interests, including the Nusantara as an influence, and help us decode their monochromatic aesthetic and concept of ‘hantulogy’. LASALLE students Hugo Chia and Taufiq Wahab chose to interview the pair as they were intrigued by the way NADA explores their cultural heritage. “Additionally, the combination of Rizman’s Butoh dance and Safuan’s sound mixing of old Malay sounds was especially interesting to us,” they say. The video can also be viewed on YouTube.
Between February to April 2020, BA in Arts Management students from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, embarked on an artist documentation project as part of their module History & Contextual Studies: materials, methods, history. The first-year students were tasked with interviewing an artist to better understand an aspect of their practice – their processes and influences, issues they were interested in exploring through their artmaking – and to produce the result of the interview in the form of a video.
The students were given brief parameters for the project but creative freedom in how they executed the brief and shot and edited their videos. They were also allowed to select any artist to interview. Some immediately gravitated to an artist they admired, some selected from within their own artistic communities, while others chose artists they were unfamiliar with or simply curious about. Six of the best videos will be shown in partnership with ArtsEquator.
This interview with NADA is part of a video project by BA Arts Management students of LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. For past videos in this series, click here.